Ethics and Credibility in Online Journalism The etymology of journalism, from the Latin diurnal is, suggests a daily account or record. The term has come to mean the collection and editing of news for presentation via one or more forms of media. Intraday print issues and hourly broadcasts in the twentieth century distanced the practice from its Latin root. Nearly instantaneous transmission and updates through new electronic media forms further amplifies this divergence. When print was the only medium available to the journalist, ample time was available for proper research, editing, and publication. Indeed, only a few early publishers had access to a printing press with which to make product. As mass media progressed, and new forms of print and broadcasting appeared, the time allowed for journalistic reflection shrank. The Internet allows news and information to move at tremendous dispatch, limited only by the speed of the electron or electromagnetic wave. The immediacy brought by the online environment, a medium where everyone is a potential publisher, allows for even less de liberation by the journalist and editor. Matters of anonymity, identity, access to information and protection of intellectual property impact the practice of online journalism. This paper will discuss how journalists and media organizations are dealing with the issues of ethics and credibility on the Web: how cyber journalists can use personal, institutional, and technological tools to ensure the consistency, fairness, and believability of their product. Ethics
Ethics and Credibility in Online Journalism
The speed and anonymity provided by the Internet can play fast and loose with journalistic ethics. The Internet has created a fourth kind of journalism next to radio, television, and print journalism. Online journalists have received little or no attention from researchers, perhaps because few, pure online journalistic efforts exist, compared to the wealth of trivia, entertainment, personal communication, and pornography. These bedfellows make adherence to an ethical code all the more necessary, particularly in a time when public trust in journalism has ebbed (Yeshua, 2000).
The pessimist:
The newest news dispenser, the runaway Internet, makes a journalist out of anybody who has a modem. It values speed and sensationalism above accuracy. New media will not accept our standards. We are foolish to treat them as if they have. This is a grim time for newspapers. -- Portland Oregonian Editor
Sandra Mims Rowe
The pragmatist:
It's past time to retire the Internet as a scapegoat for journalistic ills, it’s a medium, not a message, and it can be used as irresponsibly or as honorably as a printing press or a TV network can. --New York Times columnist Frank Rich (Welch, 1998) Matt Drudge has his own self-published Internet scandal sheet (drudgereport.com). He is the poster boy for online journalism ethics, i.e., what can happen without concise ethical standards in a world where everyone is a potential journalist, broadcaster, columnist, commentator, and media critic (Grossman, 1999). See Blumenthal v. Drudge.
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